Wait
by Ellarose C
Summary: The story of the Avatar's companion, though not as popular as the Avatar itself, is vastly more complicated than the simple air-water-earth-fire cycle of the Avatar spirit. Here, let me show you -


{A/N: So this is a random but intricate songfic I wrote while I was driving for hours around Scotland. It's rather long (it has five major parts, as you'll see), but I really love it. The song is 'Wait' by The Benjy Davis Project (which should retitled 'The Reincarnation Theme Song' in my opinion but anyway). The first lines just under this note are slightly out of order... but it makes more sense this way. Reviews are appreciated!}

_

* * *

_

_If you think that this was good_  
_Wait until the next life_

* * *

The story of the Avatar's companion, though not as popular as the Avatar itself, is vastly more complicated than the simple air-water-earth-fire cycle of the Avatar spirit. While it is obvious as to the identity of the Avatar almost from birth (and the glow doesn't help, either), there is no outward indication as to which person holds the spirit of their natural soul mate, nor is the elemental cycle always the same. One thing that's sure, however, is that it has a pull to its natural other half, even if it is unknown as to why, because it is the strongest presence in each reincarnation's lifetime to help it realize what humanity is, which is the entire point of the Avatar's reincarnation cycle. Here, let me show you -

_

* * *

_

_She was born in April  
1783  
The only daughter of a lawyer in a little town that skirted the sea_

* * *

Being born in a temple inhabited entirely of women most of your life can bring on a disturbing wake-up call when you first venture into reality, Yangchen noticed as she and her sky bison Jie landed on the decks of the Northern Air Temple. There were men everywhere - flying, meditating, laughing; boys playing, shouting, learning; those in between in age turning, smiling, approaching...

She came out of her awe with a gasp to see a teenaged monk not much older than herself with his hand raised at her side to help her down. She blushed - she didn't know why - and reached her two hands to grasp his one, using his support to slide to the ground and land gracefully on her feet-

- Except, much like she feared, her toes tripped over her very element and she feel forward, eyes clinched together, fearing the snide jeers and laughs she'd get - oh, what a great first impression-

Ever-so-slowly, though, she realized she hadn't hit the pave-stones yet, and the only sounds she heard were the same she had been listening to on the wind for the past hour, along with something much like very close breathing-

Yangchen's eyes popped open and found themselves staring at her savior. He was the boy who had smiled at her, had held her hands, was _still_ holding her hands firmly enough to keep her upright even if she completely lost her balance - oh dear.

With a start, she jumped up to a straight-backed nun's nun's posture, dusting off her robes with her newly-freed hands and avoiding his odd stare. "Thank you," she said as she imagined an Avatar would say it, turning back to her bison to retrieve her bag and staff from the saddle.

"Shen," he called down to her from the saddle in question that he had airbended over her to and was already getting her things. Her shocked expression didn't change as he jumped and actually succeeded in landing gracefully in front of her, handing over her belongings. "The name's Shen," he repeated as she shook herself - she seemed to be doing that a lot lately - and accepted his offering with a nod.

"Okay, Shen. Thank you. I'm Yangchen," she responded, then felt like a fool a second later. Of _course_ he would know who she was, she was the Avatar, here to complete her airbending fully before continuing to the North Pole to start on water-

"That's an awesome name," he - Shen - told her with a smile. She gave him a 'oh-really?' look. "No, seriously! The way it rolls off the tongue... Yangchen... Yangchen..." he repeated as he gathered Jie's reins and started walking, Yangchen scurrying to his side. "Come on, I'll take you to the stables and then the masters, Yangchen." He didn't seem to want to miss out on a chance to say her name again.

Along the way, he pointed out interesting architecture and important areas of the temple, but Yangchen wasn't paying attention to him exactly. Oh, she was paying attention to _him_, but she was watching his face change, how his every gesture affected the way he looked in the light, and his smile... oh, Spirits, his _smile_...

What was she _thinking_? They were airbenders - monks, nuns, figures of celestial cleanliness and detachment! She couldn't suddenly become a teenager and have a crush on the first male she'd ever seen for more than a glance!

But that seemed to be what was happening to her. Her carefully-tendered Avatar emotions were going in all directions as she drifted closer to his side, her hands coating her staff in sweat, and she wondered how her hair looked, if her master arrows made her look distinguished or smug, if she smelled from traveling for so long on her bison to get there... oh, _why_ did she _care?_ It wasn't like it mattered; it wasn't like she was going to see him again after he left her with the masters... was she?

They had just left the stables, where Jie was getting the royal treatment as the Avatar's animal guide, and were almost at the masters' chamber when she suddenly stopped and asked him, "Will I see you again?"

Shen, who had been in the middle of a rant about the sky bison fountain's inner working, stopped mid-word and stared at her questioningly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe later today... or tomorrow, whenever... can I talk to you again? Before I, you know, go to the North Pole?"

"Well, I didn't know that plumbing was that interesting..." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly, and her heart sank. Then he glanced furtively up and down the hallway that they were on to check for other monks, and upon finding it clear he knelt in front of her, taking her hand in both of his. "But I promise, Yangchen, as long as you're here I'll stay plastered to your side like clouds to the mountainside, like honey to your fingers, and regale all of the trivial nonsense I know onto your beautimous ears until you have to use five men and a staff to get me to leave you alone," he swore in an overly posh voice, kissing her hand.

She blushed scarlet and giggled. He smiled; her heart fluttered. "Promise?" she asked him quietly.

"Promise." His pale grey eyes held her own for a few seconds more, and would have for eternity if sounds of approaching feet hadn't carried down the hall. He stumbled to a standing position, leaving her hand bare, just as five elderly monks came around the corner - the masters, Yangchen presumed.

"Shen, what was taking you so long?" the one on the far right said. "That Avatar has urgent business to attend to. You were told to lead her directly to us!"

"I just gave Yang- the Avatar a tour of the temple, master," Shen said with a bow. The master looked at him disapprovingly, then turned their gazes to Yangchen. "Come, Avatar, there is much to be done," the same master said, beckoning for her to follow. She obeyed, but when their backs were turned she looked behind her and mouthed at an angry-looking Shen, _"See you later?"_ The anger disappeared, replaced by another smile.

_"Until next time,"_ he mouthed back, waving until she was out of sight, then running in the opposite direction to go quiz his source off useless information for more pointless facts to tell Yangchen... Yangchen... _man_, her name was so cool to say...

* * *

Shen stayed with Yangchen for the rest of her visit to the Northern Air Temple and wanted to stay with her for the rest of her years of mastery, but tradition said she had to fulfill them alone. Just after she left, Shen used a little-known exit low in the mountain to follow her. Armed with only his glider and some food, he set off after the girl he'd made a promise to - a promise he didn't plan on breaking. It was rash, brazen, and foolhardy, but she promised not to tell as long as he never left her. He promised he wouldn't. She spent her life devoted to the balance and the peace of the nations, but he spent his holding the backbone of the world up with a straight-backed nun's posture, being her shoulder and her smile when she needed it. Every time she asked, he patiently reassured her that he would never, ever leave her.

At least, not voluntarily.

* * *

_She showed her mother's beauty  
And when she caught his eye  
He was taken by her innocence it'd only be a matter of time_

* * *

She was pretty like her mother, they told him. He didn't believe them. Maybe she bore some outward resemblance to her mother, but the light from within that defined her was all hers.

Now she was gone, and he didn't even get to say goodbye.

* * *

_But then one day a cold wind blew and she took ill and wouldn't make it long  
And all that he could do was sit and wonder how something so right could go so wrong_

* * *

He was still shivering from the Spirit Oasis when the doorway covering swished behind their backs - "It's shock," they said, "the Avatar'll be fine with time" - and he curled tighter under the blankets they had covered him in, eyes wide open, staring at the darkness......

To this day he has no idea how he fell asleep. All he knew was that one moment, his dry eyes were adjusting to the moonlight filtering through the ice, and the next, he was dreaming.

He knew it was a dream because Ummi was there. She was sitting on their favorite spot on the outer wall overlooking the ocean. He walked the last few paces to her side. She looked up at him, and he knew this would be one of those once-in-a-lifetime dreams.

He sat down next to her and reached over to pull her close, almost from habit, but she stopped him.

"Don't touch me," she warned him, but not angrily. "It's difficult enough to be here without that." She smiled at him, and he smiled back - though he didn't know why.

"How are you here?" he asked her. She turned to stare out at the ocean. There was no wind in this dream, but but something shifted her hair to flow around her face in an otherworldly manner, and he realized it looked like she was underwater.

"As a spirit in Koh's grasp, you are allowed one dream visit to the mortal world," she explained, the moonlight shining in her eyes, but only her eyes. "I chose you."

"Koh?" He hadn't heard of the name before.

"The Face-Stealer," Ummi said. "He's an old spirit, Kuruk, older than the Avatar. He took me-" she swallowed, trying to keep from crying - it was all he could do not to touch her in comfort - "-he took me to punish you, Kuruk." At that she turned to face him, her drowned hair following her serenely, floating.

He sucked in a breath. "What?"

She bit her lip and looked down. "Apparently he's been watching your life - he doesn't like the Avatar, Kuruk - and thinks you've become unworthy to bear the title without some... sacrifice."

"And he chose you." Kuruk stood; the comatose manner of the day had abandoned him now, and he paced to try and control his fury. "He chose you over me! I may have been reckless as a teenager, but everyone goes through that phase! Why single me out? Why single _you_ out?"

"Because you're the Avatar, whether you like it or not - or even whether you always understand what that means," Ummi said seriously. Kuruk stopped pacing and stared at her. She turned and looked up at him, her blue eyes solemn, her lip color starting to match. She was drowning again before his eyes.

"It's a heavy responsibility, being the physical manifestation of the earth," she said with a hint at humor. "Always being the peacemaker... always being the final word, always being in the public eye - but it's a responsibility that has to be taken, and you have to learn consequences."

Kuruk sighed and plopped back down next to her. "You're right, as always. I should have been more conscientious as a youth." He pounded the ice beneath him, forgetting that it was a dream and that he wouldn't feel anything, really. "But _why_ is that serious enough to take you away from me? You changed me, you turned me away from all of that! Doesn't that make it all better?" he finished weakly, reaching inches away from her before recoiling his hands to avoid the doomed contact.

She shook her head, her heavy clothes waving slowly. "Not to Koh. He sees imperfection in the Avatar as a stain against the Spirit World itself. He's terrifying, Kuruk," Ummi told him with a shudder, "but I think that once I get used to it, it won't be so bad." She paused, listening to something beyond his hearing. "My time's almost up. Listen to me, Kuruk," she pleaded, her skin as pale as the moonlit snow around them. "I want you to do something for me, okay?"

* * *

_And before she died he told her that he loved her  
He said, "I know we'll be together sometime soon"

* * *

_

"Anything," he told her, pulling his legs underneath him to kneel, facing her.

"Remember me, wait for me," she said as she was lifted in the air, sinking into the sky, reaching out to him. "Wait for me on the other side."

His hands followed her ascent helplessly. "I will - Ummi, I will - I love you -"

She smiled down at him with colorless lips. "You have to understand what it means to be the Avatar-" she began, but his hands found hers at last, and they were cold, so cold -

But then his fingers closed on themselves, and their eyes widened -

She turned into water, floating for a breath in an eerie but perfect replica of her shape before collapsing into a puddle on the ice, freezing upon contact, becoming another section of the landscape -

Kuruk turned his face to the icy stars and roared, an unidentifiable sound of rage and pain that filled the night while a monster's civilzed laugh carried over his yell, piercing his mind -

* * *

_He said, "I don't believe in heaven" as he brushed his tears aside_  
_And he added just before he closed her eyes,_

_

* * *

_

- and he jerked awake, gasping, sweating under layers of dead animal skins in a fortress of ice. He threw them off and left the room, ignoring the time of night, and beat on the wall next to the wise man's door. The other man came slowly, rubbing his eyes and cursing the person who would wake him in the middle of the -

Oh.

"Avatar Kuruk," he said to his former pupil, taking his disheveled appearance and wild eyes in with a glance. "Can I help you?"

Kuruk seized the front of his shirt, his expression dangerous but unreadable beyond that. "Koh, the Face-Stealer," he growled, his breath hot in the wise man's face. His teacher knew that tone, and feared for this Koh's health.

"What do you know of him?"

_

* * *

"If you think that this was good_  
_Wait until the next life"_

* * *

Kuruk spent most of the rest of his life learning everything he could about the ancient spirit that stole his precious Ummi's face, unaware of the real meaning of her last words to him. She understood about the reincarnation cycle, see, and was trying to get him to wait for the next life, not the afterlife - an afterlife that he spent most of his earthly life preparing for so he could steal her back from the world's most successful thief. He was still a flawed Avatar, even after Ummi.

Despite this, the Avatar spirit flowed through its elemental cycle, choosing a woman again, one destined for great deeds, great power, and longevity.

* * *

_It was a Friday_  
_1983_  
_He was a parking lot attendant in a little town in North Tennessee_

* * *

Living forever sucks.

Avatar Kyoshi knew this better than most, having been alive one hundred fifty years and still going strong. She hated it, and she couldn't figure out why she didn't just get old and die like everybody else. It was downright depressing most of the time. Everyone she had been childhood friends with had died, their children had died, and their grandchildren were almost her equals in physical appearance. Hell, she'd gone through a husband already, and even though some of her age-defying... stuff seemed to have rubbed off on his beloved head, he, too, had passed to time almost twenty-five years ago - and he'd been eleven years younger than her!

She stopped her carriage in front of the Earth King's palace. The forty-sixth Earth King had passed away recently, another bitter reminder of her "enviable" prolonged life, and she was required to attend his funeral as the Avatar despite her secret disgust of him and his lineage. An Avatar's duty is an Avatar's duty.

* * *

_A car approaching_  
_And when they met eyes_  
_They sort of smiled at one another for a while but they didn't know why_

* * *

Kyoshi drove her own ostrich-horses. She had too many arguments with carriage drivers over directions that resulted in their physical harm to make hiring one practical. She handed the reins to the valet in attendance, who bowed, greeting her with a smile.

"Avatar Kyoshi," he said. She turned up the corners of her mouth for a moment in return, meeting his eyes briefly...

Some force caused them to stare at each other for longer than necessary, brown on green, broad but polite grin against a small but polite smile, frozen.

Kyoshi broke the silence. "Do I know you?" she asked, decades of refinement controlling her curiosity.

"Not that I know, Avatar," he said, though he seemed doubtful as well.

"You remind me of someone... oh, who is it..." Kyoshi tapped her chin as she tried to remember who in her many years looked and seemed so much like this young man. Meanwhile, he held onto her reins, patiently waiting, as per his training for the job.

"Oh! ...No, that's not it..." she said, going back to her thinking after a false start. "Wait, it'll come to me... just wait..."

"As you wish, your All-Powerfulness," he said with another extraordinary bow. She slapped his arm with a closed fan.

"Don't be cheeky, boy," she said sternly, but her eyes betrayed amusement.

"Hey, Rye! Hurry it up, we've got a line back here!" someone yelled from farther down the line. The valet, whose name seemed to be a grain, rolled his eyes and yelled back, "Hold your ostrich-horses, I'm working on it!" He looked at Kyoshi apologetically, mindlessly dropping the blank and orderly manners, leaving his roots showing through. "I'm really sorry, ma'am, but we're up to our yinyang in stupid country nobles today - maybe if you came back at a more convenient time..." he trailed off as he realized she was staring at him like he was a ghost, hand over heart. "Ma'am?" he asked, concerned, taking a step closer. "Are you okay?"

"My - my husband-" She paused. "You remind me of my husband," she breathed, falling back against her carriage, not taking her eyes off him.

_

* * *

Then something made her shudder like a butterfly set free from her cocoon_  
_A flash of indistinguishable moments shared in rainy afternoons_

* * *

"Really now? What happened to him?" he asked, since he obviously wasn't there.

"He died," she said quietly, struggling to regain her composure. "Twenty-five years ago."

"Oh." He watched her fight back a wave of some peculiar emotion until the voice yelled at him again, "Come _on_, Rye! Get your lazy ass up and _moving_!"

"Um... Avatar Kyoshi?" he said tentatively, touching her shoulder lightly. "Do you want to go somewhere quiet for a minute? The funeral doesn't really start for another hour, and, to be frank, you look like you could use it," he offered with what he hoped was an encouraging smile. She nodded shakily.

"I guess my nerves aren't quite what they used to be," she said, bringing herself to her feet once more. "A break before the storm would be nice." She smiled, her white face paint cracking slightly.

"Get in," he said, jerking his head at the carriage. She complied, ascending jerkily, but regally. _'Too bad she can't be a queen,'_ he thought as he yelled back another retort and climbed onto the front of the carriage. _'She'd make a damn good one.'_

Rye took her past the back valet lot to the servants' kitchens, where he handed her down and led her into the main room. It was deserted but for the head cook, who was sleeping at the other end of the vast table that ran the length of the massive room. He sat her down on the bench at the end and turned to the counter. "Would you like a drink? There's water, tea, juice-" he glanced at her face again - "or perhaps something stronger for the lady?"

"A beer would be divine," she grumbled, not quite surprising him. He'd heard almost-rumors concerning the Avatar's fondness for alcohol. He poured two - one for her, one for him - and sat down across from her, sliding the mug across the table into her waiting glove.

"You wanna talk about it?" he prompted her after a few minutes of watching her stare at space and sip at her drink. He wasn't quite sure what had set her off, but he knew he may never get another chance to talk to the Avatar over a pint.

"I haven't heard someone use that phrase in over twenty-five years," she finally spoke, keeping steady eye contact with nothing.

"What phrase?"

"'Up to our yinyang,'" she answered, giving the air her little half-smile at the crudeness of the saying. "Not since my husband passed on."

Rye looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

"Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be," Kyoshi said randomly, taking a larger gulp of her liquor. "It would only be worth if it everyone was made that way, and that's impossible."

"Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute," he said, raising a hand sloppily to stop her elegant rant. "Are you saying that you're _immortal?_"

She laughed - a snorting, nasty laugh that made her seem more human than anything else so far in the bizarre events of the past half-hour. "No, you silly boy, I'm not immortal." She sobered quickly. "Sometimes it feels like it, though."

"Now that I think about it, it would be depressing to live forever," he said, contemplating his reflection in his drink. "Everyone would die... rulers come and go..."

"Your children grow old and die before you look fifty..." He looked up at her and saw a hundred fifty years of pain, sorrow, joy, and torture under the famous makeup.

He reached over the table and put his hand over hers. "I'm sorry," he repeated, but with feeling. "Is there... anything I can do?" It was a feeble offer.

"I'm afraid there isn't," she said, standing abruptly, her glass drained and all business once more. "I need to be going to the funeral. Thanks for the drink." She nodded to him before heading back towards the door, back in Avatar mode-

"Wait!" he called, jerking to his feet and stumbling after her. She turned and caught his wrists just before he crashed into her. He started babbling, "I can help you! I can help you feel really young again!" His eyes danced as he continued, "There's a party underground over in the Lower Ring - you especially know how much they hated the Earth King - and there'll be dancing and lots of young people and if you take off your makeup and change into something less like you no one will know-"

"But I- I have an obligation to the Earth King - I'm supposed to speak on his behalf -" she tried to protest, but he dismissed it with a '_pfft_' sound.

"Well, fine, say a few sentimental words over the lazy slob's ass, but _then_... then will you come with me?"

She searched his friendly, handsome country face for a minute, then tilted her head to the side, curious. "I would eat you alive," she breathed, eyebrows drawing together as she considered the youth in front of her. His excited mouth widened, nearing a cheeky grin.

"Is that a challenge or a promise, Lady Kyoshi?"

"Ow! Hey, what was that for?" he cried in pain as he rubbed the band of his head. "Lady Kyoshi" had released his wrists, drawn her fan from her belt, and whacked him upside the head before he'd had time to blink.

"That was for being smart with the Avatar," she said smugly, snapping her favorite weapon open and fanning herself casually, walking outside towards the Hall of Mournful Cries. Rye shook his head like a dog, then leaned out the door and yelled after her, "Is that a yes?"

"You may pick me up at sundown," she called over her shoulder. "Don't be late; I'll be waiting." With that, she sauntered around the corner, taking all the time in the world because, for all practical purposes, she had all the time in the world.

_'Damn,'_ he thought as he watched her go, _'what a woman!'_

* * *

As Kyoshi secretly suspected, Ryota - or Rye, as most people knew him - was her first husband reincarnated. Rye brought her to life in the same way that he had, and in a way she loved him more the second time. Of course, there was some controversy over her taking a man a fifth of her age as her lover... okay, a _lot_ of controversy, but they didn't care. Kyoshi was ageless. Eventually, though, her years caught up with her, and she died at two hundred thirty, followed closely by a hundred five-year-old Rye. The companion spirit followed the Avatar into fire again, and their lives seemed normal enough for the Avatar and his lover. They fell in love, married, had kids, grew old. They were normal lives, until the close...

* * *

_They were married on the second day of summer_  
_Watched the beauty turn to wrinkles over time_

* * *

She knew.

She knew as soon as Roku told her to go on without him that she would never see him again. Ta Min coughed up the last traces of ash from her lungs while watching their island re-coat itself in earth from the center of it, hoping for one last glimpse of him-

There! Against the burning light of the magma, a lanky silhouette, clothes billowing, was fighting the volcano... and losing badly.

It was almost bizarre, watching Roku lose. It so rarely happened anymore. As she watched their very sustenance rebel and overwhelm her husband, she prepared herself to say goodbye to him without contact, a feat usually left to the mystics-

Another dragon, not Roku's Fang, flew over her head towards the island. She squinted and recognized a figure much like Fire Lord Sozin on it's back... Ta Min wasn't entirely sure if that was a good sign, and she didn't know why...

She watched the fierce struggle to save their home make a comeback with Sozin's arrival, and her hopes for her husband's survival rose with every gesture of the two small shadows of men. She watched lava hiss on contact with the ocean, turning black, and sparks flare into the night before vanishing completely. It would have been beautiful if she wasn't focusing on the human element, but she couldn't take her eyes off her husband.

A moment later, though, his death rattle shook in her head again as the other volcano erupted, enveloping the two in smoke for a final time...

She knew.

She knew before the ash cleared away, before Sozin's dragon took flight again, that it was all over; Roku was gone. She watched the dust begin to settle over a newly made island, the fury of the world settling into a lazy, but no less terrifying, flow down the slopes of their - her - home.

She closed her eyes and thought of him; not of him alone, buried alive without ritual on the top of a mountain, but of the man he had been, the moments they had shared. She didn't cry. His time had come. She didn't wish for more years with him; they had had decades. Together, they'd done all they had wanted to do in one lifetime. At their age, that was all that they needed.

She opened her eyes, staring down into the water off the side of the boat. Her wrinkled face, stained by ash and sweat, was staring sadly, silently, surrounded by the weeping and the stricken. She reached up and pushed some iron gray hair from her face.

When her hand came down again, she was young.

Her eyebrow shot up; the same eyebrow shot up in the reflection. It wasn't young, really, but in her prime, about thirty years younger than the present Ta Min. She was beautiful, and she wasn't alone.

A younger Roku, though not as young as her, was bent down behind her, hands on her shoulders, shining with a golden light that encompassed both images. She reached up slowly and put her hand on her shoulder. It was empty physically, but her reflection's hand rubbed over his and clasped it.

_

* * *

_

_And before he died she told him that she loved him_  
_And it was when she said these words he realized_

* * *

'_I love you,'_ she thought. His reflection nodded, smiling through incorporeal tears.

_'I know. Look,'_ he said, the hand not clasped by hers gesturing to their images. _'This is how the earth remembers us,'_ Roku's voice said in her mind, echoing strangely, but somehow she took it all in stride. _'It remembers our prime, not how we die,'_ he continued. _'Because life isn't about the number of breaths you take-'_

_'-It's how many moments take your breath away,'_ Ta Min finished, starting to cry at last. Her tears had ash in them. _'Wait for me?'_ she asked. He nodded.

_'I will.'_ With that, the golden couple faded into water as suddenly as they had come, leaving her real, old face again, her hand absently running over her shoulder. A moment later, her daughter's reflection took the place of Roku's.

"You okay, Mom?" she asked her tentatively. Ta Min swallowed and put on a smile, turning to face her.

"I'll be fine, eventually," she said, wiping the salty ash from her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She looked back at the slowly-calming volcano. "Your father's dead," she said quietly.

"What?" her daughter exclaimed. A pause. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I've ever been," the old woman whispered with a nod. Mother and daughter started at their home turned tomb.

"I guess it's air's turn now," her daughter said softly.

"Yes. Air will have to save the world now."

"Save it? Since when did the world need saving?"

"Oh, it doesn't right now, dear, but it will."

"... Are you sure?"

"I know."

_

* * *

If you think that this was good_  
_Wait until the next life_

* * *

Ta Min was right, although it didn't happen in her lifetime. She died shortly after - expired, more like - and the Avatar's companion passed with it to the airbenders. Time time, the Avatar was a precocious, talented monk named after the breeze, and the companion went to a serious-minded little nun.

They would never meet.

Twelve years after the eruption, Fire Lord Sozin and his secret army attacked the airbenders, massacring a peaceful race in a plot to control the world. Sozin's aim was to eliminate the Avatar from his domination equation, but the earth knew, and he knew, that the boy god had escaped. What Sozin didn't know was how. The Avatar spirit put the new reincarnation into suspended animation at the bottom of the sea, where he would stay for the next century.

The world moved on. The sun rose, ice melted and froze, earth shifted, the wind blew. The airbender girl was killed with the rest of her kind, but something unexpected happened to the companion spirit.

It became confused.

It could feel the Avatar spirit, but it could no longer feel the human it inhabited. In its confusion, it blindly entered the nearest birth it could find, winding up in the Fire Nation again. The girl it inhabited was healthy at first, but the bewildered spirit was dangerous with its other half. She quickly became a fussy, sickly and unpopular child. By the time she turned twenty, she was bedridden, too weak to be angry anymore. The doctors were baffled, proclaiming her as a medical mystery and completely beyond their help. Her family struggled to love her, and were almost grateful when the last illness proved too much and she died at twenty-two. The spirit was no closer to its match.

After that, it went to the Water Tribes, inhabiting a male waterbender (well, it had happened before), but he, too, swiftly became disabled and irrational, deteriorating even quicker than the previous host, passing on before he had reached nineteen...

And so it continued. Earth, water, fire, it didn't matter, the companion spirit's lament filled the human shells and eroded them from the inside, each succumbing quicker than the last, swirling through lives and time until, finally, the companion spirit calmed down just enough at one of the final breaths to pick out an earthbender girl with an incredibly strong soul and the best care imaginable and concentrated all of its sorrow into the beginning blow... maybe then she would live long enough to find the Avatar...

She was the worst live birth that the midwife has ever seen. It literally was the worst living delivery in human history. Everything that could go wrong, did. She was four weeks premature; she was a breech birth; the umbilical cord came out first _and_ was wrapped around her neck; her mother almost bled out - they had to cut her out of the womb after a grueling fifty-hour delivery, and just when they believed her trials to be over, they realized she was blind.

They didn't notice at first. They were too busy rejoicing in every breath she took to look at her unfocused, glazed eyes, but eventually one of the many attendants found herself smiling down at the infant for a second too long and started to scream. The baby started to cry, and her life changed again.

Her sight, the most important sense to humanity, had absorbed the unnatural anguish of the companion, but her health was otherwise untouched. She grew up strong despite her disability, or rather because of it. Her bending was channeled through touch rather than sight, a secret form that had been buried for generations, only visible to the sightless. For the first time in almost a hundred years, the companion spirit had hope.

So it did what it did best and waited, watching its earthbender hide behind her pretty little blind mask a tough, funny, and a little bit kind marvel of a personality, watching her run away from her caring shelter to the wild badgermoles, who were her real teachers, and to the underground tournaments, where large men toppled in her 'sight'...

It had been so long since the companion had seen the Avatar spirit that it didn't recognize its other half at first when he walked into the earthbender's arena. He was young, so young, and so unaware of the torture she - it - had been through for him... the companion spirit watched as its hardy little earthbender fell, listened as he talked about a teacher... but it let her run away. It needed to collect its metaphorical thoughts.

It still wasn't ready when he and his friends showed up a while later at her secret home. It watched as she and it learned for certain that he was the Avatar. It couldn't deny the electric bolt that it sent through the mind, body, and spirit of the girl at the knowledge, but her strength stood up to the odd feeling. If the companion could laugh, it would have chuckled as she kicked them out of her estate.

It still wasn't ready when the two children - not the spirits inside them, but the children - clashed so spectacularly over dinner, then bonded just as spectacularly, if volumes quieter, in the garden. It still wasn't ready when the men she bowled over on many occasions took the two for ransom, nor when she was released and sent back to her father, leaving the Avatar behind. It wasn't ready when the waterbender asked for help; that was entirely the girl's will that prompted her to go back and challenge the kidnappers for the boy containing the Avatar, her own skill that enabled her to beat them soundly, easily, her own voice that finally confess her secrets to her parents.

It wasn't her decision to run after the Avatar.

* * *

_So if you feel like you have known someone forever_  
_Don't just walk away and spend the night alone_

* * *

_'It's not fair,'_ Toph thought as she flopped face down onto her bed, pounding the mattress with her fists. _'I finally get a chance to prove myself to my dad, and what does he do? Kick out my only friends and basically put me in solitary confinement!'_ A tear escaped her blind eyes and diffused into the linen. _'It's just not fair.'_

_\Then why don't you run away?/ _a voice murmured inside her head.

She sat up, stone-straight. Since when did she hear voices in her head? She was blind, not crazy! Despite her surprise, though, the voice continued.

\_Run, earthbender. Run after the Avatar and his friends. Quickly, you don't have much time,/_ it said. The more she listened to it, the more it sounded familiar, but in a distant way, like a voice that would come up in dreams. It was multi-layered, but soft, like a thousand or more voices whispering as one. She didn't know why, but she could have sworn that one of them was her own, aged.

A way out, shown to her in her terms, came to her mind in the same manner as the voice. She had to give the voice credit, it was efficient, she thought as she examined the route.

She jumped up and dashed around her room, throwing together a bag of whatever her hands fell on... she didn't have much time...

"Wha- what the hell are you doing, Toph?"a real voice said behind her. She recognized Qua Mae's voice and vibrations, her servant and secret friend. Qua Mae walked to her side and peered into her hands. "You're leaving." It wasn't a question.

"I'm going after Aang," Toph said tensely, stuffing something else into her bag. Soft hands with heavy sleeves gently took the satchel away from her.

"Let me, one last time," her friend said, dumping everything back out onto the bed to repack it with things she might actually need. "Put this on," she ordered, throwing some fabric at Toph. She caught it - barely, clumsily - and recognized her Blind Bandit costume. It was simple enough that even a blind girl could don it with little difficulty. She stripped off her dusty pajamas quickly and began to throw on the outfit, preoccupied with the voice's message.

"Why?" Toph froze, her outer layer halfway over her head. She unfroze, thinking as the rough cloth settled around her. She couldn't tell her about the voice; it was impossible to believe.

"It just feels right," she finally answered, putting on her belt. The wonderful thing about being blind was that she didn't have to try to avoid eye contact.

They fell silent. Toph fell silent, and Qua Mae pulled the drawstrings tight over her mistress's essentials.

"Well, I'll be proud of you, as long as you're doing whatever you think is best for you," she said, handing over the bag. Toph took it with a tight throat. Qua Mae always was what a family should be like - a loving person who offered unconditional positive regard and pride in every asset and fault she possessed. She gave her real family a quick, bone-crushing hug, which was returned with equal force. "Good luck," Qua Mae whispered, letting her go.

"Thanks, Qua Mae," she said, bringing up the mental map the voice had given her.

\_Hurry, hurry, you're losing time/_

"I'll try to cover for you until you get back," Qua Mae said as Toph felt with her feet for the precise spot her map said to go underground.

"I know," she said with a smile, opening a hole with the simultaneous circling of a wrist and ankle and jumping in.

"You better come back!" Qua Mae cried after her, sniffing.

"I will," she called up to her before closing the hole behind her and tunneling forward, the whisper of voices urging her on, guiding her to Aang...

_

* * *

Because it could be someone far behind your future_  
_Waiting for their heart to come back home_

* * *

The companion spirit was happy; it was complete again. There were road blocks, of course; at first the two humans fell for other people and tried to form other relationships - oh, and there was that pesky war that the Avatar had to end. They fell away over time, though, as the companion spirit knew they would. It had done its duty again, so it waited, like always, for the perfect moment as the children grew into teenagers, then young adults, before their destinies hit them with full force. It could have happened earlier, probably, but the companion spirit was angry at the Avatar and was making him work for his other half.

He had made her wait a hundred years, after all, and that's a long time to wait - even for a spirit whose strongest virtue is its patience.

Patience only goes so far.

_

* * *

And if you think that this was good_  
_Wait until the next life_

_

* * *

_


End file.
